It will be noted that here the house is spoken of as the father’s, and not as belonging to the mother. The bridegroom is the suitor, and we see the creeping in of property considerations always associated with the rise of father-right. Though the husband has as yet no recognised position and lives in the wife’s home, he is valued for his service to his father-in-law, clearly a step in the direction of property assertion. Among many of the Malay hill tribes of Formosa the maternal system is dying out, though the old law forbidding marriage within the clan remains in force. These changes must be expected wherever the transition towards father-right has begun; the older forms of courtship and marriage, so favourable to the woman, are replaced by patriarchal customs. One or two curious examples of primitive courtship, in which the initiative is taken entirely by the girl may be noted here. Among the Garos tribe it is not only the privilege, but the duty of the girl to select her lover, while an infringement of this rule is severely and summarily punished. Any declaration made on the part of the young man is regarded as an insult to the whole _mahári_ (motherhood) to which the girl belongs, a stain only to be expiated by liberal presents made at the expense of the _mahári_ of the over-forward lover. The marriage customs are equally curious. On the morning of the wedding a ceremony very similar to capture takes place, only it is the bridegroom who is abducted. He pretends to be unwilling and runs away and hides, but he is caught by the friends of the bride. Then he is taken by force, weeping as he goes, in spite of the resistance and counterfeited grief of his parents and friends, to the bride’s house, where he takes up his residence with his mother-in-law. It is instructive to find that these marriages are usually successful. Although divorce is easy, it is not frequent. “The Garos will not hastily make engagements, because, when they do make them, they intend to keep them.”[85] [85] Dalton, _Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal_, pp. 64, 142. See also Tylor, “The Matriarchal Theory,” _Nineteenth Century_, July 1896, p. 89.